Millipedes beat vertebrates to land by 80 million years

Article excerpt

Millipedes colonized land roughly 460 million years ago, some 80 million years before the first vertebrates crawled ashore. A new study mapping the complete evolutionary family tree of these arthropods reveals they were early ecosystem engineers with sophisticated chemical defenses, challenging long-held assumptions about which animals pioneered terrestrial life. The findings suggest these humble invertebrates played a crucial role in shaping early land ecosystems.